Re: [XHR] Last Call comment on about dependencies

Dear XHTML2 WG,

Note: our mailing list has magically changed from public-webapi to  
public-webapps. I cc'ed the new list.

On Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:56:53 +0200, Shane McCarron <shane@aptest.com>  
wrote:
> The XHTML 2 working group discussed the XHR draft at a recent  
> teleconference, and I was asked to send in a brief comment. Basically,  
> the XHTML 2 Working Group is concerned that the draft appears to have a  
> dependency on HTML5.  On closer inspection, it is not clear whether this  
> dependency is completely necessary.  Further, linking the spec to HTML5  
> will delay its deployment and incorporation into other languages that  
> have a vested interest in portable scripting (e.g. XHTML 1, XHTML 2,  
> XForms).

The concepts defined in HTML5 are important for getting interoperable  
implementations of XMLHttpRequest. I don't think deployment is necessarily  
an issue as XMLHttpRequest is already deployed. Now we just need to make  
sure the various user agents get in line with respect to the behavior they  
each have.

It's not entirely clear to me why XMLHttpRequest needs to be incorperated  
into a language. In fact, it was incorperated in HTML5 at some point and  
we splitted it out. (Given the amount of work this cost me I'm still not  
sure whether it was worth the cost, but it has been an interesting  
exercise nonetheless.)


> Finally, it appears that the dependecy is slightly backwards, since the  
> requirement is that HTML5's document "Window" object support the  
> XMLHttpRequest interface.

Actually, no. The requirement is that objects implementing the HTML5  
Window _interface_ also support the XMLHttpRequest constructor.  
Furthermore, the definition of HTML5 Window is important here in case of  
URI resolution in cross-frame scenarios.

Also, that is not the sole dependency the XMLHttpRequest specification has  
on HTML5.


> Our request is that this dependency be removed (or that the connection  
> be made informative instead of normative) so that all interested  
> constituents can take advantage of this important interface as soon as  
> possible.

I don't think this is possible. Feel free to go through the public-webapi  
mailing list archives to find more detailed discussion on this subject if  
you feel the above is not sufficient:

   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapi/


Kind regards,


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
<http://annevankesteren.nl/>
<http://www.opera.com/>

Received on Thursday, 12 June 2008 12:00:16 UTC